"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury

451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns.

"Fahrenheit 451" is a multimedia age horror story of genius about firemen who are paid to set books ablaze and is more important than ever in our era of 'political correctness' and shallow consumerism. Got an unpleasant reality? BURN IT! Does that hurt your 'self-esteem' or make you uncomfortable? BURN IT!

Below is an addendum where Bradbury scathingly deals with those who have tried to censor his book on censorship (imagine that!).

"There is more than one way to burn a book.
And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."

by Ray Bradbury

&nbsp&nbspAbout two
years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me
how much
she enjoyed my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp But,
she added, wouldn't it be a good idea, this late in time, to
rewrite the book inserting more women's characters
and roles?

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp A few years before that I got a certain amount
of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks
in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn't I "do them over"?

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Along about then came a note
from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor
of the blacks and the
entire story should be dropped.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered
forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house
that wanted to reprint my story "The Fog Horn" in a high school reader.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp In my story, I had described a lighthouse
as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a "God
light." Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would
have felt that one was in "the Presence."

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The editors had deleted "God-Light" and "in
the Presence."

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Some five years back, the editors
of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume
with some
400 (count 'em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories
by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book?

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Simplicity itself. Skin, debone,
demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective
that counted,
every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito
- out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron's mouth twitch -
gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate
writer - lost!

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Every story, slenderized, starved,
bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story.
Twain read like
Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like - in the finale
- Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored.
Every image that demanded so much as one instant's attention - shot dead.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Do you begin to get the damned
and incredible picture?

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp How did I react to all of the
above?

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp By "firing" the whole lot.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp By sending them rejection slips
to each and every one.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp By ticketing the assembly of
idiots to the far reaches of hell.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp The point is obvious. There
is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of
people running about
with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish /
Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist,
Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will,
the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit
editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain
porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck
of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery
rhyme.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Fire-Captain Beatty, in my
novel Fahrenheit
451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities,
each ripping a page or a paragraph from the book, then that, until
the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library
closed forever.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp "Shut the door, they're coming through the
window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words
to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors
every month. Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years,
some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating
the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the
novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship
and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony.
Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire
book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back
in place.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp A final test for old Job II
here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university
theater a month ago. My play is based on the "Moby Dick" mythology,
dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind
space captain who venture forth
to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama
premiers as an opera in Paris this autumn. But, for now, the university
wrote back that they hardly dared to my play - it had no women in it!
And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with baseball bats if the
drama department even tried!

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Grinding my bicuspids into
powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions
of Boys in the Band (no
women), or The Women (no men), Or, counting heads, make and female,
a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially
if you count line and find that all the good stuff went to the males!

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp I wrote back maybe they should
do my play one week, and The Women the next. They probably thought I was
joking, and I'm not sure that I wasn't.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp For it is a mad world and it will get madder
if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin,
nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite,
simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the
playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But
the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights
and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not
like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin
stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors
find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmild teeth, let them eat
stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the
Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so
it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp For, let's face it, digression
is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante,
Milton or Hamlet's
father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once:
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading!
Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page.
Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them
all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp In sum, do not insult me with
the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan
for my works. I need
my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs
to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted,
to become a non-book.

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp All you umpire, back to the
bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch,
I hit, I catch. I run the bases.
At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the
old try.